« In Provence, we only produce 19% of the energy we consume ». If the 4th Assises de la Transformation Energétiques, organized by the Marseille Provence Real Estate Club, had only one […]

« In Provence, we only produce 19% of the energy we consume ». If the 4th Assises de la Transformation Energétiques, organized by the Marseille Provence Real Estate Club, had only one merit, it would be that of having gone beyond this observation of an energy-consuming area to draw the portrait of an increasingly connected territory, fond of renewable energies.
« Because the PACA region uses too much electric heating, it faces a considerable peak when the weather is too cold. Nevertheless, while everyone was convinced that the consumption would increase constantly, it stagnates since a few years, and should even lower « explained Jean-Philippe Bonnet, of RTE Méditerranée. A trend attributable both to the implementation of less greedy devices, and their « intelligence ».

Good Energy Mix

The 2018 edition celebrated the success of Smart Avenir Énergies. Launched a year ago, this program aims first and foremost to provide a good energy mix, with 50% gas and 50% electricity. But the Smart word was not slipped by chance in its name. The 10,000 Smart Avenir Énergies homes all have a real connected dimension.

In Gardanne, the inhabitants of housings made by Elgea have the opportunity to start their boiler remotely via a smartphone. The promoter Nacarat talked about a « concierge 2.0 » for some of its programes, while others announced the deployment of Gazpart smart gas meters. Smart Avenir Energies also relies on a new mobile application developed for EcoWatt, promoting citizen behavior through gamification.

Maximum Renewable Energies

In the near future, EcoWatt will also be able to point out at which time of the day the network uses the most renewable energies. Depending on the time of day, the proportion of energy coming from solar, bioenergy or hydraulics varies greatly. The most obvious example is photovoltaics, whose production depends on the level of sunshine and obviously does not produce anything at night.

Another application developed by RTE, called Eco2Mix, already allows this type of information to be retrieved. This Wednesday, if you wanted to use the largest proportion of solar energy (11%), you had to consume around 1:15 pm.

For now, this information is for informational and educational purposes only. But RTE’s vision goes much further. In a time of Smartcity and intelligent home automation, this information could easily be turned into data, injected into connected systems. It would then be possible to program his dishwasher to launch during a photovoltaic production peak, or to configure a smart building so that it uses primarily green gas.